Pinned topicEGL Batch programs in Cobol and UTF-8 - hints ?

We must handle UTF-8 with japanese and arabic characters in EGL Batch programs - generated as Cobol on z/OS, and maintaining the data in DB2 v9 for z/OS.

Have anyone prior experience in that area ?
Any tips or pitfalls ?

I think (hope ? ) that I understand most of the general issues regarding handling DB2 data - in DBRM members and BIND statements. And also not mixing DB2 tables in EBCDIC encoding and Unicode encoding.
But I would like to know if there are any specific EGL related stuff.